Die Again Tomorrow (No One Lives Forever)

The stainless steel tablet she lay supine on had been impressed with a near-perfect silhouette of her spread-eagle body, even going so far as to bulge out slightly to accomodate the wide, low-slung belt she wore over her orange and white vinyl bodysuit. The indentation came only halfway up her body at any given point, so that it almost appeared she lay on her back in a silver pool. The hinged metal cuffs binding her wrists and ankles in place, and the similarly hinged extrustions which clapped a quarter of the way over the halves of her ribcage, destroyed the illusion.

"Do you expect me to talk?" she asked. The agent felt a brief glow of pride in her own self-control; her voice had not quavered. Three inches below her crotch, the pin-thick beam of a ruby laser continued to draw its perfectly straight line up through the stainless steel table. Cate's head--the only part of her body that was in any way free to move--remained craned with her chin against her chest; she could not draw her eyes away from the sight. When she'd awakened here, it had been explained by the mysterious figure in the glassed-in control center that overlooked her that the laser was powered by Gorbochekovian compounds, and that therefore the laser imparted only force--not heat--to whatever it touched. That force was, clearly, enough to wholly atomize eight inches of stainless steel.

"No, Ms. Archer," the mysterious figure replied in its oddly flat voice, after a moment. Cate imagined she could feel the laser whispering against her crotch. Her nostrils flared as she watched the laser cover the last few centimerers to the orange latex stretched between her thighs. I will not scream, I will not scream, I will not--

"I expect you to die."

The mantra that had been circling Archer's brain flared and died as she felt the beam slice into soft flesh. Her breath--held until now, though she hadn't realized it--rushed out in a surprised hoot of pain, her lips drawn into an 'O' tight enough that she could have produced a sharp whistle. Her mouth and eyes both widened as the first burst of agony grew by orders of magnitude; air croaked in her throat as she inhaled, then returned as a helpless blat. Whatever the mysterious voice had told her, the laser burned its way through skin, muscle, blood, and bone; burned worse than any pain Cate had ever experienced. Her entire body clenched, straining against her bonds in an attempt she'd known would be fruitless from the moment she awoke, strapped to the table that would soon cup the sagging, leaking halves of her body.

"Please!" she gasped, the plea a breathy burst between fast, deep pants, "I'll--talk--Godplease--Please!" The last word was a shriek; another followed, garbled by lips that couldn't be controlled enough to form proper words. As she watched the laser cut up through her belt in horrified fascination, blood welled up from the tiny space between her thighs and the metal shaped to hold them. Having passed all the way through her pelvis, the beam dug into her belly; Cate gave an "Ohhh!" as the pain flared to even greater levels. Her mouth froze in horror, but her lungs continued to heave, producing a further series of "Ohh! Ohh! Ohh! Ohh!" on slowly rising notes. Tears streamed down her upper cheeks, rounding her jaw to drip off the back of her neck; all thought of dying with dignity had fled, leaving the agent with only her terror and agony.

Archer's cries continued to rise, until she was shrieking mindlessly at the top of her lungs as the beam approached her sternum. Below the laser, she felt nothing but a uniform, fiery ache; the ruby line was bisecting her spine on its way through her body. Cate's head fell back, eyes dilated and staring; she continued to scream, but her pain-addled mind had all but shut down. Suddenly, her hoarse cries shrank into a shaky whisper, then died completely as the beam cut the rest of the way through her diaphragm. Ripping agony jerked her chest as her heart split partway beneath the beam and shredded itself with convulsive beats; Cate's eyes fluttered, but she was too deep in shock to otherwise react. Hours of subjective time passed while the laser threaded its way between her collarbones and up her throat--hours of endless agony. Fresh tears leaked from the corners of her eyes as the beam sliced through her chin, shattering an incisor to shards with a tiny pop. Unable even to force a blink from her body, Cate's soul screamed and screamed and screamed...

***

Cate would die before admitting it to anyone at U.N.I.T.Y., but she was thoroughly enjoying this assignment.

There had been a lot of sniggering and whispering when she'd drawn the assignment to act as Jacque "Fleur de Tueur" Toures' nighttime liason. The expensive French assassin was notoriously paranoid--as U.N.I.T.Y. had discovered by losing no less than three trained agents in as many months, trying to bring Toures in for questioning concerning the death of an Indian diplomat half a year ago. Lulling the amorous assassin into inattentiveness by seducing him had already been tried once, though the agent's orders had been to subdue Toures as soon as she got him alone. Archer's approach--the approach she'd been ordered to take, that is--was somewhat more subtle.

Or not, the tiny portion of her mind that was still rational commented as her right hand knocked a priceless crystal lamp over, then spasmodically grabbed the edge of the table it'd been sitting on as if the cherrywood were her own life. The fingers of her left hand were tangled in the short curles that topped Jacque Toures' head; Cate grunted, and the Frenchman wrapped one hairy forearm beneath her jaw and lifted. Her desperate grip on the table dragged it a few inches, then slipped and left her completely helpless in Toures' grip. Grinning in triumph, Toures twisted his torso, dragging Cate around as he prepared to finish her. The spy could sense the end was near; flailing, she wriggled to pull away from the assassin in a desperate play to delay the inevitable for a few moments more. It did not help; she was utterly without means to resist the French killer.

"Ah!" she gasped, bowing to fate and allowing the orgasm to flood through her. Archer's initial plan had been to allow Jacque one quickie, let the contact poison secreted into her vagina to do its work--she'd taken the antidote to the knockout drug--and call for her backup. That had been two hours ago, as Toures was kissing her throat and slipping her evening gown off her shoulders. Their first real kiss had woken the spy's normally latent sex drive; five--no, six--orgasms later, she was chewing on the idea of leaving U.N.I.T.Y. and simply living the rest of her life as Jacque's mistress. She was also chewing the couch cusions; Jacque had slid his thigh beneath her hips, and was thrusting into her from behind at an angle that woke sensations in portions of her lower belly that she hadn't even known existed. Gasping again, she placed her hand on Jacque's and guided his fingers as they kneaded her breasts, turning her head so that her burning lips could taste his. Smiling, the Frenchman dragged his mouth across her cheek and neck, stopping to swallow a dangling pearl earring and the lobe it pierced.

Cate inhaled and exhaled in breathy moans, trembling at the edge of another orgasm as Jacque's hand dipped between the couch cushions and came back up. Gripping the back of his neck with the hand that wasn't trapped beneath her, she began to rock her body harder against her lover's; she needed to feel another sweet ocean wash up from between her legs, buzz through the nipples that Jacque teased and pinched, and cool her fiery lips. Closing her eyes, she focused on the feeling of holding him inside her, of the strangely hard/soft length of flesh slipping around within her body. Jacque raised his arm for a moment; the slapping sound of his next stroke had an odd quality to it, almost like an echo. Cate's body continued to tremble against his, and he spent himself inside her in two more hard pushes. Her fingers gripped and released the couch cushions in uncontrolled reaction to what had happened to her, while her feet twisted against each other and a small tic spasmed the skin of her cheek.

Pulling out of his latest trophy, Jacque stood naked, and crossed the room to pick he phe phone. Behind him, Cate's face still held the expression of slack ecstacy it'd assumed nearly a minute before, as the night's final petite mort approached. A small trickle of crimson blood rolled down across her face, pooling for a moment before crossing the bridge of her nose; its source was the dime-sized hole just above her ear. Behind her drying eyes, her skull was almost completely empty; the frangible bullet had punched the majority of the colloid matter out through the fist-sized hole that was concealed by the fact that her head lay on the couch. Small quivers continued to roll thorugh her body, and the toes of her left foot clenched and unclenched in regular rhythm.

"She is dead," Jacque said into the phone, setting his silenced pistol on the table beside him. Listening to the reply, he laughed.

"Enjoy it? Not really. She was barely an adequate lover--out of practice, I'd say," he said, popping another of the pills that rendered him immune to the poison Cate had used. "I was going to kill her with my love-seed all over her face, but I wouldn't trust her with my dick in her mouth!" He paused, frowning as he heard what the other end said.

"Yes, I said 'love-seed'! Just because you are too insensitive to understand the language of lovers--!"

He exchanged a few more short words with his contact, then dressed and left the room without once glancing at the cooling, naked body of Cate Archer.

***
Agent Archer's high-heeled sandles clacked as she walked down the damp cobblestones of Brindisi. The ocean currents had just carried away the storm which had been drowning the Italian port city for the past three days; in its place, the air was cooler than it had been--though it was by no means cold, or even chilly. Cate's longsleeve, paisely silk blouse was almost too much, even with only the two buttons that closed it over her breasts clasped. The occasional streetlight reflected brightly from her low-slung white capri pants, as well as the ruby jewel winking from her belly button. With the thick, silver frame of her mod sunglasses perched at the end of her nose, and the orange plastic purse bumping her hip, her ensemble was possibly the least appropriate outfit for sneaking into secret Russian submarine bases that had ever been assembled.

Which was, of course, why the spy had picked it out. It was, at best, a difficult propostion to play the innocent, helpless woman when your body is covered in a night-black body stocking hung with all sorts of spy equipment; very few people would take a woman dressed for a gas at one of the local nightspots as a serious threat. That would be their mistake.

The next street up paralleled the Svevo Castle's southern wall as it led toward the sea; the street lamps had all gone out--had all been shot out, as Cate had seen when she'd strolled through the area this morning. Through the thickening evening fog, she could hear the low rumble of a truck engine at idle somewhere ahead of her. With a small smile, she headed towards the edge of the street, where the castle walls shadowed her from the waning moon. If her hunch--her research and groundwork--were correct, the truck would be unloading supplies into some sort of hidden cargo entrance to the underground submarine base the Soviets had built beneath the city. Peering through the grey night as she slunk forward, Cate thought she could make out the silhouette of--

A millimeter-thin strand of woven steel wire looped around her throat from behind and drew tight. The beginning of a surprised squawk was cut violently short as the garrote squeezed her larynx closed. Eyes bugged wide, Cate clawed in panic at her neck; her legs, however, remembered the grueling hours of combat training she'd undergone, and stomped at her attacker's instep. Her heel slammed into the pavement as the assailant easily avoided the countermove, and forced Cate to kneel on the grimy cobblestones. The spy's fingernails opened long scratches in her own neck as she dug at the wire; thrashing, she slammed her attacker against an electrical transformer bolted to the castle wall, springing the access door open. At the impact, a feminine grunt forced itself from her attacker's throat; the woman planted a knee in Archer's back and pulled on the garrote with redoubled fury.

Archer began to panic in earnest. She wasn't in any danger of suffocation, yet--though it felt like an eternity, the attack had only begun thirty seconds ago--but her brain wasn't recieving enough new blood; the end result would be the same as if she were only cut off from breathing, and would actually take place much faster. Blackness was edging in at the corner of her vision; she could feel her tongue poking from between her lips, but her entire body felt as if it were made of lead. Desperate inspiration struck; one of Cate's hand fumbled for her purse while the other continued pawing weakly at her throat. By now, the agent's upper body was supported wholly by the wire cutting into her neck; she was too weak to hold herself up. In another few seconds, she would pass out, and then she would die and the polizia would find her in the morning with her face distorted and purple and oh god she couldn't breathe oh god oh god!

With the last of her waning strength, Cate brought up her perfume bottle and tried to point it behind her. She couldn't see anymore, and her arms were numb; finding the nozzle with her finger, she managed to depress the pump once before everything went black.

She woke a few seconds later, face stinging from smacking into the pavement when her assailant dropped her. Behind her, Cate could hear her attacker coughing and retching; stun gas was a decidedly unpleasant experience. For tens of seconds, perhaps half a minute, Cate simply lay on the street and breathed. Blearily, she got her hands under herself and pushed, managing to get to her knees after a bit of effort. In her struggles, she'd burst the buttons of her blouse; it hung open, exposing her bare breasts to a night which had suddenly grown quite cold. Still gasping for breath, Cate rolled over onto her buttocks and looked up just in time to catch the toe of a classy woman's boot in her mouth.

The impact tossed her back and split her lip; blinded by tears of pain, she lashed out with a kick of her own and felt a satisfying impact against someone's shin. Rolling over as her attacker cried out in pain, she again regained her knees. Before she could climb to her feet, however, a gloved hand grabbed her hair and jerked her head back. Another clamped on the waistband of her muddied capri pants, and then Cate found herself flying through the air. The edge of the open transformer door filled her vision.

The mysterious woman reached down and lifted Cate's head again. Archer's face was a bloody mess; blotched purple from strangulation, nose swollen and probably broken, upper lip bleeding from a rip two centimeters long which exposed the sticky gaps where several of her teeth had been knocked out. One pupil had contracted more than the other; she was concussed and likely unconscious. The agent's breath came slowly and deeply, completely filling her lungs before exhaling as the woman holding her up watched.

With a sneer of disgust, she dragged Cate back into the street a foot or so by her pants, pulling them down around her thighs in the process, then rolled her over onto her front. Awareness began to slowly return to the spy as the woman once again grasped a handful of her hair. That and strong grip on the back of Cate's blouse was enough to heft her an inch or so off the street, though her breasts still pressed against the cobblestones. Grogglily, the British agent blinked her eyes--and gasped in breath for a scream as she felt herself thrown forward again, breasts scraping painfully on the pavement.

Cate slammed facefirst into the guts of the open transformer, hard enough to crack the plate of bone behind her nose. She felt it as a searing chasm of pain; the ten thousand volts that poured into her body, she felt as a supernova of agony for the split second it took to kill her. Her lungs spasmed around their full load of air; Cate Archer's corpse screamed for over thirty seconds while her face charred black and her hair burned with a greasy sullenness. Her body kicked and flopped on the cobblestones, hands punching the cobblestones hard enough to splinter her fingers while her hips humped and slammed. The woman who had murdered her turned and walked calmly away, raising one wrist to her lips so that she could speak into the tiny one-way radio built into her large bracelet.

"Mission accomplished," she said flatly. "Need--" she paused as aftereffects of the stun gas drew an irritated cough from her throat. "Need medical attention. Foxhound out." Cate Archer, agent of U.N.I.T.Y., turned to offer her own smoking body a disapproving glance before disappearing into the Italian night.

Pushing herself up on one elbow, Cate Archer glanced around the empty deck. Set atop the roof of U.N.I.T.Y.'s Fiji headquarters as it was, Cate was unsurprised to find the deck empty except for herself--especially since she'd locked the only door that accessed it when she'd come up. Satisfied, she unclasped the cups of her green-and-black zebra striped bikini top and dropped the garment beside the lawn chair she reclined in. Laying back, she sighed contentedly and adjusted her mod sunglasses; it was so very difficult to keep a healthy tan while working from U.N.I.T.Y.'s main headquarters in England. As much as she enjoyed her work at U.N.I.T.Y., there was much to be said for vacations. Technically, she was supposed to be overseeing the construction of a new batch of Santa's Mark VII Mechanized Myna Birds; but that assignment had been handed to her with a nod and a wink. She was, truth be told, utterly exhausted from that ridiculous business with the kidnapped astronauts last month. Kidnapping astronauts, really. What will those H.A.R.M. buffoons come up with next...

A blue helicopter rose into sight over the roof edge to Archer's left; printed on its nose in twelve-inch letters was the acronym H.A.R.M. This close, even the noise-damping technology built into the helicoptor's rotor couldn't keep it completely silent; a low wow-wow-wow throbbed the sun-bleached boards that made up the deck as Cate sprinted across it. Behind her, both the lawn chair and her bikini top tumbled and bounced off the roof, propelled by the wind from the spinning rotors. Cate turned and popped off two quick shots at the helicopter from the Petri Airweight revolver that was never far from her hand; the racket was easily audible over the chopper's muffled sound. As she'd intended, the H.A.R.M. commandos crouched at the helicopter's cargo doors flinched back, giving her the precious seconds she needed to unlock and open the door. Even so, return fire smacked into the small shed that housed the stairway entrance as she fled down into the headquarters building.

Questions buzzed in the agent's mind, questions she didn't have time for--What is H.A.R.M. doing here? How did they find this place? And for the love of Saint Peter, why did they have to wait until I'd taken my top off? Lips pressed together in annoyance, Cate hit the bottom of the stairs and caromed through the doorway into the main assembly floor--a space nearly fifteen meters square, and every centimeter of it packed with the contorted machinery which produced the Mark VII Myna. The five day shift workers there goggled as the woman they called, alternately, 'the ice queen' or 'that frigid bitch' when they thought she wasn't listening burst in on them wearing nothing but her swimsuit bottoms and a pair of wide sunglasses. Two of them turned and high-fived.

"Get out of here, you silly bastards!" Cate cried, shooing them with her hands. "Can't you hear, we're under--" A spray of autofire spack-spack-spacked into the doorway behind her, cutting off the rest of her sentence. Cate dove forward, landing on her shoulder and rolling to avoid smashing her breasts against the floor. From the way the workers shouted and fled, she guessed they'd gotten the idea; now, it was time to worry about herself. U.N.I.T.Y. kept a standardized armory stocked in the basement, but she had to get to the far door first--rows of the complicated assembly line would hinder her long enough that the H.A.R.M. squad thumping down the stairs would have an easy target of her. Instead, the superspy scampered on all fours beneath the first row, then turned left and slid open an access hatch to a parts bin she hoped was empty.

Seconds later, the squad of H.A.R.M. gunmen burst into the assembly line room and found it empty. Muttering to themselves in German--H.A.R.M. tried to keep its operatives racially seperated, to help ensure smoother functioning within units--the blue-suited goons spread out and searched the room as best they could. Cate watched them from venilation slats built into the bin's walls, barely able to breath with her knees squeezed up against her breasts. The bin was a tight fit, but it'd served well enough.

Breathing a sigh of relief as the last squadman pulled the far door shut behind himself, Cate worked her hand down between her calves and managed to get the access panel open again. It seemed a lot harder to get out than in; or, more likely, she'd been in such a panic on the way in that she hadn't noticed what a job it was to do so. With a lot of squirming, she finally managed to get herself out.

The H.A.R.M. squad was between her and the armory; all Cate had was five rounds in her .38 Petri. Trying to sneak past them--while half-naked, no less--would be suicide. Instead, the British agent turned back the way she came. Looking up the stairway to the rooftop deck, she could hear the low sound of the chopper's rotors. With luck, they'd left only the pilot back; and from the way the chopper'd been coming down when she last saw it, the cockpit should be facing away from her. Petri held in front of her, Archer started up the stairs.

Scattered echoes of autofire drew her lips into a thin line; the workers apparently hadn't run far enough. Well, if all went as planned, she'd avenge their deaths. They shouldn't have stuck around, anyway. Archer stooped at the top of the stairs and pushed the door open just wide enough for her to peek outside with one eye. As she'd hoped, the helicopter was facing away from her. Face blank in concentration, she the door open the rest of the way--and froze as she saw the shadows of the two H.A.R.M. guards standing on either side of the stairway shed. One of them was already shifting to look and see who'd opened the door--

Shoulders back and hips swaying, Cate strolled out into the sunlight. Her Petri revolver sat out of sight on the second step--if either of them saw it in her hands, she'd be dead. The guard on the left turned and gaped at the topless woman sauntering towards him.

"Hello, boys," Cate purred, stepping up to the lefthand guard and removing her sunglasses with one hand; out of the corner of her eye, she saw the one on the right turn. Still smiling, the spy wrapped her arms around the H.A.R.M. goon that was facing her and drew him into a deep kiss. After a moment, the gun barrel socketed against her sternum dropped as the guard returned her embrace, slipping his hands down her torso and into her swimsuit bottoms. It took an effort, but Cate didn't draw back and punch the cheeky bastard as he squeezed her buttocks, pulling her groin against the growing bulge in his pants. The thought of allowing these apes to touch her made Archer sick, but she'd be killing them soon enough...

It took her a few seconds to disengage from the guard's grasp; he couldn't seem to keep his hands off of her breasts. If he noticed that his touch didn't arouse her in the least--her body was primed for fight or flight, not sex--he didn't appear to care. Finally, with a push that sent him stumbling back and an alluring smile that promised something more later on, she turned to the other guard.

The other guard was a woman whose wide grin was accented by the submachine gun she held pointed from her hip at Cate's chest. Cate heard the first guard scramble out of the way, as icewater flooded through her veins. The woman's eyes were hidden by sunglasses similar to Cate's own, and her hair was tucked up into the blue field cap favored by low-level H.A.R.M. goons.

"Nice try," she said in a refined British accent. Still smiling she drew back the charging handle on her submachine gun.

"Wait, I--" Cate's words broke into a scream a second before the female guard pulled the trigger. The roar of the automatic weapon was loud; the sound the bullets made as they splashed through flesh and bone was deafening to Cate, even over her own screams. Her body rattled and jumped as she stuttered back into the entrance shed, but the guard did not let up. The weapon was loaded with dum-dums; huge gouts of blood exploded from Archer's back, spreading against the wall behind her in wide fans of crimson. Laughing, the guard followed her, driving Cate back against the stairway door and pinning her there, jerking, for the few seconds it took to finish emptying the clip. Cate slid to the ground, bawling aloud; her voice had a gargling quality as blood began to fill her tattered lungs. Her torso was a ruined mess, leaking from the thirty holes that puckered it from her belly all the way up to her breasts. Archer screamed and sobbed helplessly at the pain filling her body, eyes locked on the female guard's hands as they stripped out the empty clip and slapped a fresh one home. The dying agent shrieked as she held up her hands to ward off what would come next.

The roar of autofire drown out her cries, and it was hard to tell if the way her body flopped and jiggled was the result of the clip being emptied into her chest, or a conscious attempt to escape. When the submachine gun finally clicked empty again, Cate Archer was staring at it with a dumbfounded expression. After a long moment, she slumped over on her side, leaking more blood from the chewed, oozing ruin that had been her chest. The returning H.A.R.M guards cursed as they shoved her body out of the way, five minutes later; lugging up the huge crate of Mark VII Mechanized Myna Birds was hard enough.

"Into the chopper," Cate Archer directed. "I can't wait to get out of this damned monkeysuit." Though I must admit, making this look like one H.A.R.M. faction attacking another was a brilliant idea of Bruno's. But I wonder how H.A.R.M. managed to convince that clone to work for them...? "At any rate," she sighed, "the Mynas are safe. God only knows what H.A.R.M. might have done with them, if we'd let them...!" Archer glanced out at the mid-afternoon sun, and therefore didn't see the quick, mischievous grin the other H.A.R.M. soldiers shared with each other.

With everyone safely on board, the helicopter quietly rose into the air and headed back the way it came. The breeze from its rotors was not strong enough to dislodge any strands of the dead Archer's hair from the tacky pools of drying blood they were trapped in.

* * *

"Uhh... where am I?" Cate sat up, wincing as pulled and strained muscles in her hips and thighs twinged.

"You've been captured by H.A.R.M.!" said Santa with his usual unflappable cheer. His voice came from a microspeaker built into the throat of the Mark VII Mechanized Myna Bird perched on an IV stand nearby. Cate found herself completely nude on a medical examination table, in a room of tile and bare stainless steel; various counters contained questionable implements in orderly rows, and a gigantic computer hummed and beeped along one wall. "They injected you with some sort of memory drug--don't be surprised if you find yourself very confused for the next few days, especially when it comes to details! You will probably also be unable to recall the events of the past three days!"

"We believe they planned to subvert you, and use you for their own ends!" Santa replied. "We've managed to draw away most of this facility's security personnel with a raid on another nearby, providing you an opportunity to escape! Your clothing and equipment have been stored nearby--hurry, Cate!" Nodding, Cate pushed herself to her feet--she must have been doing a lot of running, before they caught her; her legs were aching.

"Dammit," Volkov grunted from behind a pane of one-way glass as Archer threw open the door and found herself face-to-face with a brutish, stupid-looking H.A.R.M. guard. The nude woman and the idiot blinked at each other for a moment before the brute threw a hard right that sent Cate sprawling back into the lab room. Volkov sighed and rubbed his forehead; obviously, this Archer was faulty. Despite his scientists' best efforts, the facility still occasionally turned out an Archer that was a bit slow of reflex or wit--or both, as this one seemed to be. Something was amiss with the guard clone, as well; they were supposed to patrol the front entrance area, where the Archer clones could sneak past them during the daily escape scenario. At least I'll get a show out of it, the H.A.R.M. lieutenant thought. No matter how many times he repeated the experience, watching Cate Archer die remained a thoroughly enjoyable pastime. The guard unslung and aimed his submachine gun at her, but did not immediately fire--ah, yes. H.A.R.M. scientists hadn't spent much time on the neuro-isotronic programmation for the guard clones, implanting only two endstate goals with regard to Agent Archer. In this instance, probably due to Archer's current location and state of dress, the guard's simple brain had chosen the endstate goal that didn't require him to shoot Archer until she stopped screaming.

Cate scrambled backwards, her Catholic upbringing putting a silent prayer on her lips--a request for the absolution of her recent sins, as she'd no prayer at all of making it to safety before the guard ripped her apart in a blaze of lead. To her great surprise, she had time to finish the prayer before the echoing snap of gunfire lit the room--and the guard missed!

"Hah!" the agent cried as she slipped behind the metal operating table. Protected for a few precious seconds, she snatched up a stainless steel tray, dumping its array of surgical utensils to the floor. The heavy tray would make a good improvised throwing weapon, hefty enough to make the guard flinch and give her time to grab--

The butt of the guard's weapon clubbed heavily against Cate's temple as she stood.

Blearily, she realized that someone was in front of her, but she was floating; her feet waggled helplessly in the air, and she couldn't move to let the person in front of her past. Her back was against a cold wall; she felt warm, drenched in sweat, and the cool metal wicked away the heat. Her head

---

this is where i stopped writing. i do not expect to finish this story.

Really nice fiction, had to fap after reading this. I remember playing No One Lives Forever and I was so dissapointed that there was no ryona. No idea why the devs decided to first make a super sexy agent for player character, but then to put her into fps and not showing her at all! If possible, can you add any of your Cate Archer related poser pics to to the story? Would make it perfect ryona material :P